fun stuff

In case you don’t get it, “long” is a data type – 86400 is a “long” integer, as opposed to a “short” integer, which can’t hold bigger numbers. If you know you’re only going to be dealing with small numbers, you would use a “short” integer to save memory space in your program. (And 86400 is the number of seconds in a day.)

Ah well, I still think it’s funny. In case you we wondering, I found it here. There are quite a few other funny ones there, if you look around.

Object-oriented kittens have no ->microwave() method, but real world microwave ovens use a procedural model.

I sent it to a friend, who didn’t get it, so I had to write this explanation:

kitten->microwave() is another way of saying kitten.microwave(). In other words, microwave() is a “method” or function that the object “kitten” can perform.

So it’s saying that object-oriented kittens don’t have this capability – you can’t call the “microwave” function of a kitten.

Fortunately, real-world microwave ovens use the procedural model, so you can just write:

microwave(kitten)

I practically burst out laughing when I saw the original signature, and the end of my explanation set me into fits of laughter again. In retrospect, I guess the original joke contained quite a bit of subtlety that only a geek would understand – but I still think it’s funny. Ah, geek humor!

Okay, now with that out of the way, we can talk about what makes it so great. As you probably know from my Desktop Madness series, I love wallpapers – I collect them and I change them quite often. Apparently, this habit is not unique to me. (Heck, even my MOM changes her wallpaper based on the season; though she uses Webshots to get her pictures.) So I wanted something to help me manage my growing collection of wallpapers – and to help me choose a new one to suit my ever-changing mood.

Enter John’s Background Switcher. A nice little program that sits in your system tray (sorry – the “Taskbar Notification Area“) and randomly switches your background based on criteria that you set. You can enter a few pictures in manually or set it to watch a folder (and its sub-folders, if you want) and pick a picture from there. You can double-click on the icon to change the wallpaper right away (or right-click and get more options, such as going back to the previous wallpaper) or just let it change randomly at an interval that you set (I use 15 minutes at work, 30 minutes at home).

As a bonus, the program is written by another blogger/programmer, who wrote it for himself and then decided to release it for free. What a nice guy!